DIEUWKE SPAANS
7 October – 1 November

Open Mon - Fri 10 - 5, Sat 12-4
Opening 7 October 6-8pm
Delfina, 50 Bermondsey Street, London SE1 3UD

Delfina is pleased to present Dieuwke Spaans’ first solo show in London. She will show new drawings and collages on paper.

Spaans’ drawings are dream-like transformations of fetishised bodies. She creates physical mutations and ambiguous forms, projecting animal characteristics onto her subjects, or human traits onto animals. The result is a dark and disquieting projection of people’s beastlike nature. A struggle for power permeates these images of carnivalesque decadence.

Using idealised representations of bodies from fashion magazines, Spaans reveals a latent violence within her recurrent themes of pleasure, sex and eroticism. However, the effect is softened by her aesthetic sensibility and multi-layered technique, which combines drawing and painting, collage and printing. Reminiscent of characters from a graphic novel the images appear to lead the viewer layer-by-layer from the glossy surface of modern life into a mysterious interior world.

Dieuwke Spaans (1973) was born in the Netherlands and lives and works in Amsterdam and Berlin. She graduated from Rijksakademie in 2001 and since then has exhibited in widely in The Netherlands and abroad, recent exhibitions include: De Limbo Life, Pictura, Dordrecht (2004), Terretoria, The Caraia, Prato (2005), Into Drawing, Limerick City Gallery of Art, Limerick (2005), and Micorocosmos, Centraal Museum, Utrecht(2004). Spaans will be represented by Diana Stigter at the Frieze Art Fair.

For further information please contact Karin Eklund on 020 7357 6600 or email admin@delfina.org.uk.